Tag Archives: cheesecake

What’s the twist? It’s a low carb, high protein, nearly sugar free, ketogenic friendly, gluten free, low(er) fat cheesecake. Wow, takes all the fun out of cheesecake, amiright? Wrong, you’re all wrong! This cheesecake was delicious! What was even more delicious was the nutritional breakdown. Per 275 kcal slice, this tasty treat had 6 g net carb, 22 g fat, 14 g protein, 2.8 g sugar (we’re talking the macro nutrient breakdown equivalent to eating an avocado, plus some extra protein). Compare that to a slice of regular cheesecake at 500 kcal, 47 g carbs, 32 g fat, and 36 g of sugar (with the macro nutrient breakdown equivalent of a punch to the feelings). Plus, this thing tastes goooood. Can a recipe that essentially starts, “make a chocolate cake, then crumble it into the crust of your cheesecake,” be anything but delicious? The answer is yes, it can also be rich, moist, and low in carbs, sugar, and gluten.

I can’t believe it’s not gluttony

Chocolate Almond Cheesecake:

The Crust:

The crust of this cheesecake is essentially a modified version of the Epicurious.com flourless chocolate cake (hey, I ain’t no recipe thief! Credit where credit is due). I replaced the sugar with a sugar free sweetener and added the almond meal to fill in for the missing bulk of the sugar. If you’re staying strictly keto, I would recommend a liquid sweetener over a powder (like Splenda) because the filler used often contains carbs that aren’t listed on the nutritional facts.

Heat the oven to 375. In a double boiler (or a pyrex bowl over a small pot of boiling water, because you don’t have a double boiler) melt the chocolate and the margarine until smooth. Remove from the heat and in a separate bowl beat the eggs. It’s very important that you let the chocolate cool a little bit before you mix in the eggs, otherwise you will actually cook the eggs in the chocolate and it will lump. Once you’ve done that, mix in the almond meal, sweetener and cocoa powder. It should be a little thicker than traditional cake batter, so glop it into a baking dish and bake it for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, turn the heat down to 200 and bake for another 10-15, to dry it out. Now you have a chocolate cake. But you don’t want a chocolate cake, you want a cheesecake crust. When it’s dry and cool, go against your better instinct and crumble it all up and press that crumble into a pie dish–press it up the sides, and if it’s too crumbly just add some water. You may not use all of the cake (I only used about 2/3, so you may want to start with just half for two reasons: 1) you can keep track of the amount of cake you use if you are strictly watching your macros, and 2) the leftover cake can actually be served as cake…instead of a pile of chocolate crumbs you have to eat with a spoon over the sink, I’m speaking from experience here.

Whip the egg whites and the sweetener. Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk until fluffy. Add this to the inside of the crust you’ve already prepared, and put the whole thing in the oven. You did set the oven back to 300, right? Don’t you just hate recipes that forget to tell you to do that until the end? Bake at 300 for 15 minutes, then cool and refrigerate. You can eat it warm–I did–but if you let it cool through, it sets really nicely. Makes 8 avocados slices. For some extra bang, when you serve it, don’t rattle off all those healthy adjectives above until they are stuffing their faces with it – and that one friend who declined because they “never eat that kind of thing, too heavy!” Well that person gets to watch you all enjoy it guilt-free.